Summer seems like it is slipping right away from me, and no matter how hard I try to "do nothing" these days, the days get full from morning until night. This morning was a tennis round robin, which meant barreling out the door with half-dressed, half-fed children at 8:45 to drop them off at Water Works and the nursery (which was shut down for part of last week with a staph infection and disinfection). I was fairly on this morning--great serving, funky second serve with unexpected spin, and good reflexes at the net. As soon as it was over, we hurried home so I could check my email to see if I needed to change my clothes and rush to a meeting at the Homeschool Place for the Advisory Committee. The meeting was postponed until this afternoon, so I gave the signal for the kids to vacate the car, and the next thing I knew, Rebecca was on the phone with worry in her voice because her period is perhaps several weeks late. Well, duh...take a test!!! Since she was hemming and hawing, I took the liberty of piling the kids back into the car to go buy her a test and take it to her, then stood by while she peed into a cup because she couldn't produce a stream for 5 seconds (it was negative...). Since I was there, I took the tour of her rearranged rooms, checked out her reorganized basement, and suddenly Frances was inviting herself to spend the night. What luck! Given that Frances has been having a rough time lately, it was nice for her to have something that was all about her all day long today. And an evening with one fewer child for me, not that it really slows down the pace any.

Finally I made it home, where Ollie and Walter and I cheated our way through a 500 piece puzzle. How do you cheat? You allow the vast chunks that were already together in the box to stay together. And hence you finish a puzzle in an hour. Then we set out to pick up Frances' bike, which was being repaired at Agee's, popped into gymnastics to give a list of dates she would be missing this summer so August could be prorated, and went to the meeting at the Homeschool Place. All through this, I had a barely controlled migraine, which only now is in remission thanks to an Imitrex sample I picked up from the doctor last week. Amazing, amazing stuff.

Tomorrow we don't have much on the docket. Perhaps going to the pool with some friends. Picking up Frances. Looking at a science book. And of course gymnastics. In the evening I have another tennis round robin. So I suppose tomorrow is full, isn't it?

I haven't had a chance to say much about the conference this past weekend. There were parts of the day that were energizing, even paradigm changing (the session on right-brained learners was especially good, even though I had in the past gone through checklists of traits of right-brained learners and determined that Walter fit all of the 'negatives' and none of the positives). But overall, it felt sparser than in past years and just lacked a certain energy and excitement. It kind of went through the motions. I felt a lack of connection with the other participants, of which I think there were fewer anyway than I'm used to. I'm not sure if the budget there is just stretched too thin to add more opportunities for networking and a larger vendor hall, or if there's just a certain anti-curricula bent that keeps tings at a kind of low level. At any rate, I didn't even get a chance to spend time among the vendors or at the used curriculum sale downstairs because I was either volunteering or attending a few sessions, and the next thing i knew I had bailed to go get margaritas with some friends, and it was over. I realize that I need to register my needs with the organizers as feedback and to let the organization know what I'd like to see next year; they claim to be member run, and I can't complain if I'm not giving them input in the first place.

Ollie and I are making steady progress on Harry Potter. The book has only been out three days, and while it makes me an adult failure to have not read it all by now, considering that we are reading aloud 100 or more pages a day, we're rather ambitious in our own way. Yeah, I want to know what happens, but at the same time, I'm getting to really savor the experience of the book in a way that I might not if I was just reading for information. I'm reading for inflection, expression, and performance! In good time, we'll also be among the initiated. All I have to do is avoid the other people in the world until such a time comes.

This evening I also seem to have volunteered to lead another class at the homeschool place. Hilary and I are going to do Story of the World together, starting in Volume 2, the Medieval World. I'm really excited about this. I realized tonight that I really do wish that I was doing more than was checking some things off our list for next year, things that I'd want to cover anyway and that aren't just extras. This fits the bill quite well, since we spend a lot of time either listening to or reading the books, but never seem to get around to the activities. This will be lots of fun, I'm sure.

I'm headed to bed, hoping for a halfway decent night's sleep. Last night was actually pretty good, for once. There were some wakings, but by and large they weren't memorable. And that's a good thing.

It feels like we live at Busch Gardens sometimes. I think this was our 8th or 9th visit this summer. And at least our second this week. Frances was decidedly wimpy today, even with the peer pressure of friends there. She rode nothing. I was too busy with Rutledge to give her no choice and deal with the fallout of that. So she rode her little kiddie rides and that was that. One day she will come into her own, I hope. But today was not one of her more mature days. She began with wetting her bed, proceeded with whining and crying throughout, and primarily rode rides designed for Rutledge. And we missed both tennis and gymnastics today, which is something that I will not be doing again any time soon (though with as sticky, nasty hot as it was today, I'm glad that I wasn't putting her in Richmond Olympiad for two hours). Overall, though, we had a very fun day without too much incident beyond not finding my car in the parking lot at the end of our visit.

My goal for tomorrow is to stay home. The pace of our schedule and my inability to say no to anything does not bode well for the school year. I'm not very good at marshaling the troops to get us out the door in the morning with all equipment, clothing, and food for an all-day marathon of disparate events. For days now, even a few weeks, it feels like I set out at 9 a.m. or before and don't return home until nearly 9 p.m., with half a dozen stops along the way. Exhausting. So even though we have opportunities tomorrow, we're going to hang out here.

I picked up a few new books at the library tonight, so I am off to do a bit of reading before my eyes roll back in my head.

I'm watching Bob Marley on Youtube, and I was remarking that it has to be hard to do a whole show when you're that high. I mean, I can't even go to Busch Gardens sober, or worse yet, have two sips of beer and not feel like I'm going to pass out and throw up during More Pet Shenanigans. And that's when it hit me what my problem is. I'm not going to Busch Gardens high. That's got to be up there with the oh so controversial three martini playdate that you read about in those goody goody mainstream parenting magazines. Four kids in a theme park alone with me; I'd call that an irresponsible venture under any circumstances.

Tonight was a dinner and dessert discussion with some people I know who are homeschooling older kids--middle and high school. Very, very enlightening. One of the most interesting things was that there was no mention of needing a solid support group, or even a support group at all. Most of their children are plenty plugged in with whatever it is they do--playing the harp, Boy Scouts, choirs, etc. And like with anything else, do you really need more than a couple of good friends? Do you really need a crowd. And even more energizing is the reiteration that we homeschool, that's what we do. Just as with school, or anything else in life, for that matter, there may be good years and less good years, years when math goes well and years when it isn't so great. But you keep moving along. There are no guarantees anywhere. I brought up the question of why so many people seem to send their children to school once they hit middle school or so. There were a couple of responses, including one I hadn't really thought of, which is that maybe after 12 or 13 years, many people are just ready for a break. Or the typical stresses of middle schoolers and teenagers may leave parents wanting to feel less solely responsible or wanting time out from some of the autonomy struggles. Since this still seems in the distant future to me, it hadn't crossed my mind to think about the challenges of extra power struggles...and trying to get in math and science.

I could spend all day watching Discovery and the History Channel. Imhotep is on right now. They are excavating a foot. The other night it was Loch Ness. Isn't it always Loch Ness?

I wish I had positive energy to write interesting posts these days. It's all I can do to stay awake. Perhaps tomorrow, another day, will bring fresh material.

So much for my uncluttered summer. This week is VBS for two children, tennis lessons for one, swim fun team for two, a birthday party, a spelling bee, a tennis clinic, and a double shot of gymnastics. I can barely keep my eyes open with exhaustion from having to often be in two or three places at one time.

Someone just described me as having an exciting life. How true is that? I mean really, I'm a stay at home Mom with a tennis addiction and an uneasy juxtaposition of not enough and too much time on my hands. I do some combination of teaching my children at home and watching them learn in the world while I sit back and ferry their bodies where they want to go to do this. And I retrieve my dogs from the woods across from us several times a day. I suppose it's all in how you describe what you do.

And when it all comes down, it is a pretty exciting life. There was the breath-holding, sweat-inducing, ice dripping down my bra and neck singles match yesterday. There was the grand challenge of taking two five year old girls to Wal-Mart tonight and having them babbling to each other, me, and the other shoppers in their made-up language while I ran over their feet an undisclosed number of times because they wouldn't stop darting in front of me. There's tomorrow, when we're planning to drive up to Wintergreen to watch an Eddie from Ohio concert and see some fireworks. There was the non-child-friendly Thai hot chili stir-fry on the rice noodles tonight that we served to seven children, at least three of whom practically turned inside out. There are the 18 semi-melted orangesicles in the garage freezer because I had to take a friend home and then stop at Blockbuster instead of going straight home after I had been grocery shopping. The book group with 8 7-10 year old boys in it. And the used mattress I'm supposed to pick up from a friend tomorrow so that the twins will finally have something on their top bunk. I guess you can't really argue that it's not dull.

I'm in love with our screened porch. I read out here. I type out here. I blog out here. I spend time with the kids out here. I escape the freezing cold air-conditioned house out here. It's a place that positively reeks of my dogs (and features them as a visual element, since they love it more than I do) and gathers clutter like you wouldn't believe (yard stuff, nature table stuff, candles, sand toys, dirty dishes). But it's warm, cozy, and feels set apart from the rest of life.

I'm reading the Memory Keeper's Daughter, and right now I can barely put it down. I just started it this afternoon, and it's noteworthy that I am even able to start a book at this point in my life. Ollie and I finished Harry Potter 5 yesterday and started on the sixth book, but between reading aloud to him and cleaning up at the end of the day and general exhaustion from getting up too early to play tennis almost every day, I don't find a lot of leftover time for my own pursuits. I need to change that somehow. It's back to the old question of what you *don't* do in order to enable yourself to have time to accomplish the things that you *do* do.

I had a conversation with several different people today about what is different about next year from previous years that it just feels so...complicated and necessary to be planning right now for the fall. And my response is that it's because (a) there are more people to plan for--Frances is a real entity who is a full participant in many of the activities and (b) there really are more offerings for homeschoolers these days. There's the Homeschool Place, for one. But there are also just more organized activities and ones that are asking for a commitment or a reserved space...NOW. It went from art class being a drop-in with potential times on M, W, F. Then last year we sort of asked if the teacher would do a class just for our five families at a regular time each week. And now it feels like we have to reserve the spot and the time now to be insured it's going to be there for us and that it fits in our schedule, which of course means that we have to figure out what our schedule is in the first place, which leads back to the realization that IT IS JUNE!! Not August, not September, not even a full month from when the last "school" year ended, but early summer, when we're theoretically supposed to be on break. The best I can say is, it cannot be helped. Here we are, so we have to go with it.

I am going to sign off and return to my reading before the sleepover erupts again or I find myself being awoken by the crying of another person's child at 2 a.m.

My Toke

That's Rutledge's big line these days: "No, my Toke!" Yeah, he's Coke obsessed just like the others. His other major cutie is saying, in response to, "What's your name," something like "I'm me. I'm Rut!"

We spent too much time outside today, considering that it was 95 degrees and deathly humid. The bad thing about my "match of a lifetime" tennis games is that they go on forever, and this one today was a replay of last week, but with a different result. I lost the first set 6-1, which didn't reflect the level of play going on, just, apparently, my inability to wrap it up. The second set I won 1-6. And then I won in the tiebreaker 5-10. It was amazing and exhausting. I kept putting ice into my bra and into my hat, but in the final five minutes, absolutely nothing was helping.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the sitter was locked out of the house in the heat with four kids she had taken to a tennis lesson, and they were all huddled in the garage next to the cat door, where it was cool because of the air conditioning. I felt horrible! Two neighbors have keys, but neither was home, although one arrived fairly soon after I heard the bad news, saving the melting folks at home. Poor, poor Heather, who will probably never set foot at our house again!

Wimbledon is on, Sharapova, my favorite Canon-snapping player, just won in a landslide. And I am remembering, as I always will, that this is the week that I spent in the hospital back when I was pregnant with the twins. I had a lot of time on my hands to watch a lot of tennis. A lot of everything, actually. A lot of crossword puzzles were done. Logic puzzles. All kinds of puzzles. Every day. All day.

Tomorrow is the first book group, and Ollie has a selection of books he might like to read, but Walter is stuck on My Father's Dragon, which is probably a little slower than the speed of this particular group. And a little too innocent. Ollie and I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight, and it was very, very intense for him. Although I've taken some grief that they haven't read the books before, I feel like it makes sense to wait, since the themes, many of them, are rather mature for them even still. It's a lot to take in and process. If we play our cards right and prioritize our reading the way we have been (read: no reading for me, no free time without a child right next to me), we'll be through the sixth book in about five days.

The topic of overprotective parents came up today at the park. I probably fall into the most permissive category. My kids go online and play games almost every day. They're pretty innocuous ones, IMO, things like Nickelodeon cartoon tie-ins, Webkinz, and Lego.com. And they play console video games, including my recent major step out in letting Ollie get Call of Duty 2. We haven't, however, succumbed to World of Warcraft or any other multi-player role-playing games (thank goodness! I know nothing about that subculture and am happy to remain in the dark!). I do let them go out in the cul de sac across the street without me to play with their friends, though this is a pretty recent development. Unfortunately, it has included letting Frances go. I just can't stay over and outside by myself with a pile of 4-8 year olds and not go crazy after an hour. More and more, though, I'm finding that the group ends up here playing, which is fine with me. I have thought a lot lately about letting Ollie go out on his own to take himself to tennis on the trails behind the school playing fields, but I think he's not quite ready yet to take that step, especially if we haven't all walked the path several times with him before. But I do look forward to the time when the boys will be able to be at the pool on their own while I do other things--while I am at the fitness center or playing tennis, especially. It will simplify things to a huge degree. Of course, having Rutledge be 4 will also simplify life in some ways.

I'm feeling like I'm not spending enough time with Franny lately. I'm in the house with her, but I'm so focused on reading to Ollie or keeping Rutledge from hitting us with a big stick or helping Walter with math that I'm not giving her a lot of undivided attention. We probably need a date together this weekend, though preferably one that doesn't include Build-A-Bear. I tend not to stick around during her activities because they are not Rutledge-friendly, and that means that I feel a bit more out of touch with her these days. She loves to be read to, but she isn't going to sit through a 900 page Harry Potter book. She loves to do her own math work, but it requires so much concentration and intervention from me that we don't do it as often as I'd like to be doing it.

I need to get to bed. My most memorable dream last night involved me sleeping in until 9:30 when I had to be at Fox Hall in the West End to play tennis at 9:00. I had missed the babysitter ringing the doorbell, and on top of this, I was wearing about 8 layers of too-tight clothes that I couldn't peel off so that I could get dressed. I knew that by the time I got myself together and drove where I needed to be that it would be 10:15, and it was too late. There was nothing I could do, and given my childcare gaffe week a copule of weeks ago, I knew this would be the end of my time on the USTA team. It was just so vivid!

I was mistaken last week--this week, tomorrow, is my final USTA match. I think I've only had one win this season, which is disappointing. I don't know why I'm so fearful of hitting the ball, but I just give away points. I'm going to try not to think about this and just play as hard as I can. After last week's match, I'm on a high and ready to redeem myself at #1 singles tomorrow. I have a sitter coming, which has taken a good deal of prep; I can't stand strangers coming to stay in my house and feeling like it looks like a pigsty. Right now it's more like a cleanish pigsty, but it's the best I can do. And Ollie will make it to his own tennis lesson, which is a good thing.

If we can find the time tomorrow, we are only a day or so away from finishing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We have averaged 120+ pages a day for the past four days, so if we work at slightly above that pace tomorrow, we'll have it all wrapped up and be able to move on to the 6th book and be done well before the 7th comes out in three weeks or so. It is taking all of my spare minutes and my time to myself after children's bedtimes to get to this point, but I'm looking forward to reading some different books once we finish this series. There are so many on our list that I'm eager to get started.

Friday is the first meeting of the boys' book group. I hope that they will be cooperative. I hope that Ollie will find some books that he wants to read. I hope that Walter will listen as we read so that he can participate. But it is exciting for them. Today I took Ollie to B&N to look at possible selections, and I think he has a few. We didn't buy all of them because that was going to get expensive, but he is ready to say what he wants to see happen and what he has liked in the past. More on that to come.

Tomorrow after tennis we are going to Sunday Park for a picnic. It sounds hot. Today was horrendous in terms of heat. The rain that is supposed to arrive Friday cannot come soon enough. It was so hot at the pool today, even in the water. And all three older kids have red faces from me not protecting them well enough. Their bodies are looking rather white, but their heads, no matter what I do, seem to be in trouble. I hope that we don't melt in the heat. And I need not even think about Richmond Olympiad in the afternoon. I'll need to remember to pack plenty of water. Even then, it's rather unbearable there. The weekend promises a much better forecast, with lower temperatures and lower humidity.

I need to get pictures on here again. I have them. I've been taking quite a few at the pool and when we have been out, it's just a matter of uploading them to the computer and then putting them on here. I haven't done it much yet, so I'm less familiar with the process, and for me, if it's not automatic, it doesn't happen.

Kerry accused me of making bad decisions tonight. With a blinding headache with the air pressure today, I took BC powder, which is full of caffeine, at dinnertime. Now here I am, still with a headache, but likely to be awake all night. We shall see.